Formerly the non-partisan watchdog of the 2010 US Census, and currently an opinion blog that covers all things political, media, foreign policy, globalization, and culture…but sometimes returning to its census/demographics roots.

Posts Tagged ‘Coverage Follow-Up’

ENGLEWOOD, CO, Apr 27, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — TeleTech Government Solutions, LLC, a subsidiary of TeleTech Holdings, Inc.(TTEC17.63, -0.41, -2.27%), has engineered and launched a secure telephony solution to support approximately 8,000 call center agents across five call center outsource providers for the 2010 U.S. Census. As part of this solution, TeleTech also provides custom-designed desktop applications, sophisticated workforce management tools, call recording and business intelligence across the 11 call centers supporting the project.

TeleTech is providing these technology services for the census as a subcontractor to IBM as part of the Lockheed Martin-led Decennial Response Integration System contract. TeleTech supports inbound and outbound operations in 11 call centers nationwide to either answer questions from respondents about the 2010 census and the questionnaire or to call respondents to allow for more coverage follow-up. TeleTech’s fully redundant, secure, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) infrastructure will enable the 11 call centers to support up to 60,000 inbound calls per hour. Call processing began on February 25 and it is estimated that TeleTech’s network will support more than 15 million calls by the time the program ends on August 14, 2010.

In addition to being the principal provider of call center technology, TeleTech is staffing approximately 1,300 call center agents in the Stockton, Calif. and Kennesaw, Ga. call center locations who are skilled in six languages including English, Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Spanish and support an 18-hour day that spans from Puerto Rico to Hawaii.

“TeleTech is proud to have been selected to support the 2010 Census,” said Mariano Tan, president of TeleTech Government Solutions. “We have been developing this solution for the census since TeleTech was selected in 2006, and believe our selection is a testament to our ability to consistently deliver industry leading technology solutions.”

The 2010 Census forms began arriving in the mailboxes of 120 million U.S. households in early March 2010. People with questions about the form contact one of five census call centers through TeleTech’s network where agents offer Telephony Questionnaire Assistance (TQA). Callers are able to get answers to frequently asked questions and request forms through a fully automated interactive voice response system. More complex questions are automatically routed to a geographically dispersed pool of trained call center agents ready to provide questionnaire assistance. The system also features an integrated satisfaction survey to enable continuous measurement of the caller experience across the various call centers.

After the questionnaires are returned, the Census Bureau will go through an extensive Coverage Follow-Up (CFU) data validation process. TeleTech’s technology infrastructure is expected to schedule and manage more than 8 million outbound calls allowing call center agents to reach out to respondents for the purpose of completing missing data elements or clarifying responses. By using this solution to support the validation process, the Census Bureau will be able to save the cost of sending a census taker door to door to follow-up with each household that fails to respond. TeleTech began supporting the CFU call follow-up on April 11.

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau is tasked with surveying the entirety of the nation’s growing and changing population. Data is collected through mailed paper forms, field enumerators, and call center agents. To promote the speed, accuracy, and security of data collection, the Census Bureau is embracing an unprecedented level of information technology in 2010. For every one percentage point increase in the national participation rate by mail, taxpayers can help the Census Bureau save about $85 million in operational costs.

ABOUT TELETECH GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS: TeleTech Government Solutions provides full service front- and back-office business process outsourcing and customer and enterprise management services on five continents. The company helps government agencies implement large-scale solutions tailored to meet specific needs and challenges by delivering customer management, transaction-based processing, and database marketing services. TeleTech Government’s comprehensive solutions include fully managed, OnDemand services including infrastructure, software, and business intelligence, interactive voice response (IVR), self-help Web, back-office processing, fulfillment, training, staffing and other management applications. For more information visit www.teletechgovernment.com